The GPU is cheap, there's not a chance Nintendo would've made the deal with Nvidia if it wasn't. Nvidia has no one to sell the Tegra to ... who the fuck needs that much power in a tablet? And even if they did almost every major mobile maker is in bed with an established chip partner already. Nintendo had all the leverage here. If Nvidia wasn't going to give Nintendo a mobile chip, I'm sure Qualcomm, DMP, PowerVR/Imagination, or Samsung would be happy to get on that gravy train. So whatever deal Nvidia gave Nintendo it must've been better than anything else on the table, I'm inclined to believe Semi-Accurate's report that Nintendo basically bent Nvidia over for this deal.
Nvidia's gain from it likely will be that they can finally tout the Tegra as being in a multi-multi-million selling flagship product to other vendors, giving the Tegra line legitimacy, and if NX is a success, well then they can certainly negotiate a better deal for the NX2. They've already invested the R&D into the Parker Tegra and while self driving cars are a cool idea, it's not like that's going to be an overnight thing, we are probably 4-5 years away from self driving cars being a real mainstream product. Nvidia needed the NX deal for Tegra bad.
The LCD display is going to be the big cost, as with the Wii U ... a cheap display will still run Nintendo probably more for the LCD + touch panel than the actual chipset.
